


quick to burn but pretty to look at

by hiza-chan (callunavulgari)



Series: Facts That Matter [1]
Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Backstory, Bullying, Canonical Character Death, Consensual Underage Sex, FTM verse, Genderqueer, M/M, Pre-Slash, Rape/Non-con Elements, Sibling Bonding, Slut Shaming, Underage Drinking, Underage Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-10
Updated: 2014-03-10
Packaged: 2018-01-15 07:44:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1296970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callunavulgari/pseuds/hiza-chan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Axel's sitting on the stern of the sinking punchline, waiting to drown.  (Or: Five times Axel gets caught wearing women’s clothing and once he didn’t.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	quick to burn but pretty to look at

**Author's Note:**

> Once upon a time, my girlfriend and I had an AU that we were playing with. Primarily it was her brain-child and her writing, but we spent many a night brainstorming this verse, marathoning Skins and drinking tea. Much of her week with me in South Carolina we cruised around, listening to MSI and plotting. We've since broken up, but this verse meant entirely too much to me to leave as is, so I'm re-posting the bits she'd finished on here and then taking off where she left off. Once again, this story, the Riku-centric one, and the first four chapters of the main fic were not written by me. I will be cleaning them up a bit, but they were written by the much beloved, rudy_flamthrowa.
> 
> Age Frame:  
> (Corresponds with each section. Axel is three in the first section, Kairi is eleven in the third, and so on.)
> 
> ___1__2__3__4__5__6__  
> Zack: 7 13 18 20 21 22  
> (1)  
> Reno: 6 12 17 19 20 21  
> (3)  
> Axel: 3 9 14 16 17 18  
> (3)  
> Kairi: 0 6 11 13 14 15

**xXx**

**1**

  
  
Axel’s earliest memory is of his mother saying, _“No, stop moving that. If you so much touch these shoes I’ll wallop you.”_ But he tries on the heels anyway and makes three shaky steps down the staircase before he loses his grip. The slender heel slips past the edge of the step and Axel goes tumbling the rest of the way down into the foyer.  
  
Later, when Zack asks why Axel came home from the doctor with a cast on his left foot, his mother's pointed silence is a stark, painful burst of memory.  
  
  


**xXx**

**2**

  
  
Aside from the echoes of Reno’s whinnying laughter from outside, the house is silent. His siblings are cavorting around the backyard, but Axel is content as he is, buried into the cushions of the couch and pillowed by white taffeta, with the game controller hanging limply in his hand. The volume on the television is turned to zero, so he can hear if his mom’s car pulls into the driveway, but his eyes stay cemented to the television screen as it flashes FINISH HIM in bright red letters.  
  
When the little pixilated figure lands the final, punishing blow on his opponent, the back door whips open and crashes against the wall with a sound like a gunshot. Zack and Reno run wildly through the living room pelting each other with clumps of dirt and swinging their empty squirt guns around their heads like deranged war lords. As the duo races past him, time slows down to an agonizing pace and the ensuing chaos plays out like a bad slow-mo scene: their muddy, bare feet catch around the dangling cord of the controller, not only ripping it from Axel’s hands, but sending the console connected to it reeling off the television and thudding to the floor in a rapid-fire flash of sparks. The two boys, tangled, airborne, and covered in filth land on top of Axel’s spindly nine year old body, and someone’s head rams into his nose. Suddenly, there’s blood, mud, tears, and too many legs in one place; they curse and scream at one another until a shrill wail erupts from the kitchen. Axel kicks the two grappling idiots off the couch, hikes up his skirts and staggers into the other room to lift the shrieking child off the linoleum floor and into his arms.  
  
They knocked her down and spilt her juice, she relates to him in between wet sobs pressed to his chest, and when he stalks back into the living room with his face still streaked with blood and Kairi seated on his hip, Axel unloads a barrage of filthy curses at his older brothers that only just drowns out the subtle rumble of an car engine as it pulls into the driveway.  
  
They throw the console into the recycling bin, wipe some of the mud off the carpet and cushions with wet paper towels, and manage to settle Kairi down in the span of three minutes, but nothing can be done for the old wedding dress hanging off of Axel’s thin frame as his mother finally walks through the front door.  
  
  


**xXx**

**3**

  
  
“Dude, your sister is hot.”  
  
It sure wasn’t the first thing he wanted to hear when he had a splitting headache and the tracings of cat whiskers on his cheeks, but Reno fell victim to drunken shenanigans more than most people his age. Though he supposed that’s what happened when your mom took off for weeks at a time and frequently left the liquor unlocked. And since Zack had left for basic training less than a week ago, Reno was still reeling in the thrill of being the man of the house for once.  
  
He rubbed lazily at the uneven lines and prayed that the perpetrator hadn’t used permanent marker. Turning from the mirror, he ground out carefully with a tequila dry mouth, “Rude, my sister is twelve and I am not too hungover to deck you.”  
  
“Pretty good lookin’ for a twelve year old,” Rude called over his shoulder as he stretched out on Reno’s futon. “She should probably wear more than a slip.”  
  
‘A _slip?_ ’ Reno balked. Like the lacy things? Kairi wouldn’t have been caught dead in her under- _anythings_ lest they were covered by layers of over-things…And she was supposed to be on some whamby-pamby school retreat this weekend, anyway. The only people who should have been at the house were him and-  
  
_Shit._  
  
When he eventually stumbled down to the kitchen, he found Axel leaning against the kitchen counter with a plate of toast and eggs, clad in nothing but a lacy pink slip that barely covered the backs of his white thighs. Reno let out a swift curse and ducked his head into the living room. Only a handful of people were stretched out over the furniture, so there was a chance no one else had run into his weirdo sibling.  
  
“Could you at least wear something normal when I have company?” Reno whispered when he found a sturdy purchase on the door frame and reached for his cigarettes. “Rude thinks you’re a girl now.”  
  
_An incredibly slutty girl, at that,_ Reno thought to himself incredulously. The slip was _incredibly_ thin, stupidly lacy, and if Reno wasn’t so used to seeing Axel don his mother’s underthings, then he might have fallen to the same fate as Rude. Axel was bony with hardly any muscle to speak of, but the satin stretched thin over his body, softened the boyish angles of his frame. His hair was haphazardly pulled into a make-shift french braid, and Reno would bet money that it was the same hairstyle that Kairi had wrangled his spiky mess of hair into before she left. It made Reno uncomfortable with the fact that his actual sister wouldn’t even consider wearing anything like that, especially the way Axel did with his long legs and tiny waist—in broad daylight, no less.  
  
Axel scoffed and shifted to lean his back against the counter. His mouth worked into a stiff little frown as he chewed on a slice of toast, and Reno was finally given chance to notice the step-stone path of pink, bruised skin up and down his little brother’s neck.  
  
Not cool.  
  
“Oh, _come on_! You stupid, little fucker!” Reno shouted breathlessly as he rushed up to Axel and slapped him against the side of the head with the pack of cigarettes still clenched in his fist. “You’re not old enough to be allowed to do that with someone!” he spluttered, and he wound his fingers into Axel’s forearm and squeezed _hard._  
  
The smaller boy ground his elbow into Reno’s waist and knocked his hand away. “Why’s that?” he snapped in his girlish, unbroken voice. “Why do I have to be ‘allowed,’ to do anything? If I want to skip school, I do it. I want to drink? I pour myself a glass. You don’t _let_ me.”  
  
Axel snatched the pack of cigarettes out of Reno’s grip and had the filter of one pressed in between his lips in an instant. From out of nowhere, a lighter flicked to life against the end of the cigarette and he took a deep drag, fixing Reno with a smoldering glare. It effectively burnt away the feminine allure that had followed his mannerisms not a moment earlier, when Axel was just a boy in the kitchen who happened to be wearing women’s lingerie —not his brother.  
  
“If I want to fool around with someone at a party in _our_ house” Axel snarled, “and then put on something silky the next morning, _I do it._ ” He then pelted the open pack of smokes at Reno’s head, spilling them out all over the floor, and marched out of the room. He stomped up the stairs with the grace of an angry bull, waking the dozing bums in the living room. Reno ground a stray cigarette into the kitchen tile with the heel of his foot and willed his vision to stop spinning. No normal human being needed to deal with this unfair onslaught of teenage bullshit, especially at nine in the in the morning. But, _holy shit_ —sometimes he wished Axel would act his fucking age.  
  
_“And **nobody** gives me permission!” _  
  
  


**xXx**

**4**

  
  
Axel is not going to cry.  
  
He’s not going to cry when he finally walks through the front door, and escapes the early morning chill, and he definitely isn't going to look at the clock hanging off the foyer wall. He’s going strip off his muddy boots to leave them in the hallway, and he’s going to step silently upstairs, willing himself to ignore the searing pain that twists through his limbs.  
  
Axel is going to walk into his mother’s room, sit down on the red plush stool and search through her rugged maple vanity’s creaking drawers for a half-emptied orange bottle of pain killers. He’s going to pull out a little handheld mirror, unsteadily press a pill to its hard reflective surface and crush the white capsule with the edge of a gold perfume bottle. Once he’s pounded the pill into a fine dust, he’s going to take a nail file and tap out two thin little lines. After fumbling around in the shallow drawer of makeup, he’s going to press the open-ended cap of an eyeliner pencil to the first strip of powder, press one nostril shut with a free finger, and inhale.  
  
He’s going to choke and cough harder than he has in his entire life, and Axel will ignore the hot pain that spreads like a bubbling inferno through his nose. He’ll want to rub his fingers into his eyes because they burn and cloud up with the pressure of his unshed tears, but he’s not going to cry yet. What’s more important is that he’s going to feel a blistering, white anger seep through his resolve and wrap around his consciousness with the biting cut of steel wire. He will blame Reno for not meeting him after the concert, and he will blame the sweat and thrill of the crowd for making him ignorant, but he won’t blame himself.  
  
With a hardened resolve, Axel will press his nose to the mirror once more and draw in another quick breath that lets his senses shrivel tight against his bones like wet plastic bag.  
  
No, nothing is going to shake him until he hears the door creak open, and he watches a fine golden light spill into the dark, dusty room. The slight form of his little sister is going to pass through the lemon-crème crevasse and see him couched over the edge of the vanity, shuddering with the pillow-soft inflation of the high behind his eyeballs.  
  
_“Axel, is that you? It’s, like, five-thirty. Did you-”_  
  
Kairi will see him for sure, then. In the shadows, the blood dried to his lips and teeth will look as dark as ink. She’ll see the streaks of mud running down his long bare legs, and the purpling bruises that scant the edges of his thighs. She’ll smell the heavy cloud of nicotine and alcohol that has settled into his clothes, and hear his rapidly uneven gasps for air as he tries to catch his breath. She’ll spot the bloody, scabbed-over swell on his cheek when she tries to catch his gaze and fails. Kairi is a smart kid, like that; she won’t fail to notice a thing.  
  
It’s when she speaks up again, her voice strangled with the soft, bitter clarity of one separating a dream from reality, which will send the first tear rolling down his bloodied face.  
  
_“Is that my uniform?”_  
  
And then that stinging, barbed wire will seize tight around Axel’s heart as he leaps from the stool, screaming and demanding that she leave. In his rage, he’ll accidentally ram his hands into the vanity and spill its contents to the floor, blanketing the carpet in lip stick tubes and little white pills.  
  
_“Get out! Get the fuck out!”_  
  
Kairi will be just smart as she’s always been; once she swings the door shut behind her and begins to retrace her steps to her bedroom, she’ll stifle a sob with the back of her hand that Axel hears anyway through the thin walls. Then he’ll turn his back to the door, face the rest of the dark, empty bedroom, and gather the blue and white pleats of Kairi’s skirt into his shaking, white-knuckled fists. And then, only then, does he allow himself to cry.  
  
  


**xXx**

**5**

  
  
When Kairi’s first high school dance rolls around, Zack is gone on tour of some dusty country halfway around the world. Reno is wrapped up in his own precarious issues with his gang-banger friends. Axel has been selling weed out of his bedroom, and hasn’t really left the house in four months.  
  
No one had seen their mom in a while, but she managed to call from her cell a week before homecoming and threaten to put Axel out if he didn’t start going back to school. So instead of going to the mall with her friends to shop for dresses, Kairi hangs out in Axel’s bedroom talking him out of his recluse. She works at him slowly, selling the rest of his stash to one of his creepy stoner friends, and kicking out the various potheads who’ve taken to hanging around their kitchen. Eventually, she gets him to drink orange juice for breakfast instead of vodka on ice, and she goads him into wearing clean clothes one day, and then they finally get around to untangling the knots in his long red hair.  
  
While all her friends are decked out in skimpy, shimmering skirts and shaking their hips to the giddy pop music in the high school gymnasium, Kairi stays at home, her legs folded neatly under her on Axel’s bed, and plays Mario Kart with him until the break of dawn. That Monday, the two of them get dressed in their school uniforms and each chug a glass of pulpy orange juice before jogging out the door to catch the tram to school. Kairi doesn’t even mind missing the dance that much when Axel walks her to her first period class, and gives her a sweet, awkward half-hug before stalking off to the seniors building.  
  
When the flyers for the winter formal begin to appear around school, Kairi doesn’t even need to ask Axel to take her shopping. They plan the shopping trip two weeks before the big dance, and end up in downtown Twilight in the middle of the worst stretch of snowy weather since the 1920’s. Axel doesn’t mind though; he swaddles Kairi into her mom’s wool coat and stuffs a pink pom-pom hat on her head, because no weather could keep her brother from doing what he wanted. He would trek around in the snow wearing only his thick black boots, Zack’s old leather jacket, and a pair of her jeans, if it meant they could keep their shopping date and get Kairi her dress. So, Kairi does what she does best: she pulls a long purple scarf out of the closet to wind around Axel’s neck and then lets him nudge her down the iced sidewalk to the tram station.  
  


...x...

  
  
__  
  
“Hi there, Bobby. I was hoping we could settle this bet that I have going with my sister. I’m wagering that she’ll look stunning in a cornflower blue, but I think she’s settled for something black. _Black._ The only reason to wear _black_ is at a funeral. Am I right?”  
  
“Axel, I don’t think—”  
  
“I don’t know about you Kairi, but I’m not going to a funeral anytime soon. I can’t imagine wearing black to a _winter formal._ What do you say, Bobby?”  
  
Axel drops a plastic bag of their mom’s jewelry on the glass counter, and watches Bobby’s disinterested face perk up at the shine of gold and pearls.  
  
“Can you help us settle our bet?”  
  
  
  


...x...

  
  
“Axel, I’m still not sure this is a good idea, pawning mom’s stuff like that.” Kairi stuttered, blowing heat into her cupped hands. It was definitely too cold for a shopping trip, regardless of how badly she and Axel wanted to go. And then the creepy pawn shop? This was ridiculous, Kairi decided. Axel was going to criminalize himself trying to buy a formal gown for her.  
  
“Sissy,” Axel snickered, pulling his hands out of the pockets and pressing them atop Kairi’s. “This is the _last_ thing on the big list of shit I’m going to get in trouble for in my lifetime.” He shook his head gravely, whipping the ends of his scarf left and right.  
  
Kairi pressed her wind-burnt lips together and started, “Yeah, but that— ”  
  
“The _very last._ ” Axel pulled them both into the entryway of a nearby coffee shop. “Come on—inside for a minute. It’s fucking freezing. And hey,” he drawled, reaching for the door handle, “if our _darling mother_ spent a little more time at home, then you’d be going shopping with her, not me! She’s the unlucky one.”  
  
“I don’t know, Axel—” Kairi said, her lips curving into a tiny frown as she resisted Axel’s warm grip.  
  
He winked devilishly —his newest charming invention of late—and drew her closer to the entrance with insistent tugs, “You don’t know what? What color you’re going to wear? I told you, blue!”  
  
“No, you’re changing the subject—” Kairi began again. But Axel was relentless.  
  
“What, you want pink? We’re redheads, Kai; it doesn’t work that way for our kind.”  
  
She rolled her eyes and let out an exasperated sigh, “Axel, your _natural_ hair color is as dark as Zack’s. _You dye it_.”  
  
“It’s natural if one wears it as such,” he said very matter-of-factly, “Or so Saix tells me, if your eyebrows match well enough. And mine do. Therefore—”  
  
“Axel!” Kairi huffed angrily, and pulled away from him, leaning back against the iced over windows of the coffee shop. Axel stopped smiling and peered down at his little sister, who decidedly avoided his gaze.  
  
“I’d like to buy you a dress, Kairi.” Axel said somberly, batting at the tiny pink pom-poms hanging from the center of her hat.  
  
Kairi gave a little scoff, and looked more intently at the iced-over sidewalk beneath their feet. “You just want to try them on with me.”  
  
Axel bit down on his lip before it grew to an honest smile, and admitted, “That’s a little part of it, but I _still_ want you to get a nice dress. Good enough? Come on, let’s go get something warm to drink.” He jostled Kairi a little to get her to step away from the icy glass and wrapped an arm around her shoulders to pull her close against his side.  
  
“Did you have to keep calling him _Bobby_?” Kairi muttered with her face pressed against the cool, black leather.  
  
Axel let out a raspy laugh and pulled her closer against his side. “’Course I did. Would have been inappropriate otherwise. It’s not the first time I’ve been there.”  
  
“You’re kidding,” Kairi gawked disbelievingly.  
  
“Nope,” he affirmed with a little snarl.  
  
“And mom hasn’t noticed?”  
  
“I think the issue is that she doesn’t care.”  
  
“Oh, stop that.” Kairi replied, waving off the comment and raising her shining blue eyes to meet his again.  
  
Axel smirked and reached for the door one more time, but as he finally wrapped his numb fingers around the handle, Kairi let out a little exclamation and withdrew from his grasp.  
  
“Oh, Riku? Is that you?”  
  
A windswept silver-haired boy, walking briskly against the sweeping snowflakes, looked up at her, confused for a second. Then recognition dawned on his pink face, and he smiled through the mess of his loose hair at the young girl. He waved his gloved hand around his head to stop the occasional swift gusts from throwing his hair into worse disarray. “It’s freezing! What are you doing out here?”  
  
“We’re shopping for the formal.” She exclaimed, raising her hand to shield her face from the biting wind. “What about you?”  
  
“Oh, I don’t know, walking—er—getting coffee? I live pretty close by, so…” Riku trailed off, looking past them into the snow city streets, his cheeks staining a darker shade of pink.  
  
“Are you going to go? To the dance, I mean.” Kairi quipped back at him, all perky and charming despite the fact that Axel felt physically beyond the verge of frostbite. There’ was something familiar about the kid though, so Axel let go of the handle and joined his sister on the sidewalk.  
  
“Actually, no,” the kid bashfully shook his head, and poignantly looked down at the curve. “I’m not. I’m going to visit some friends back at the Islands.” It was the mention of the beach that jump-started Axel’s memory.  
  
"That sounds really nice! To get away from this shitty snow, right?” Kairi tittered like a spring bird. Axel examined the kid with rapt attention, feeling like there was something familiar about him, and then Riku’s messy hair parts over his face and Axel accidentally catches the gaze of those sea-green eyes.  
  
“Yeah, of course,” Riku spoke, and gave Axel an eager and expectant look around the nest of his silver hair. His lips quirked into an awkward smile, and Axel knew he was screwed.  
  
This was the transfer kid from Destiny Islands who was bumped into his math class for being a genius or something. It was a short-fused ruse that kept him out of trouble at school though. What Axel _really_ remembered him for was the party that Marly threw the weekend before. It was the same type of party that Kairi made him promise to stop going to, but was sneaking out in the middle of the night to attend anyway. It was the _exact_ party where he let some shady looking old guy fix him a drink _or five_ that sent him stumbling around the rest of the night in a boneless mess. This kid was there for sure, in all of his beach-y glory, letting Demyx fawn over his sunblock-scented hair and rolling loosely packed joints like he hadn’t lived on a beach for his entire life. And if Axel was one hundred percent sure, his was the last face he remembered before blacking out and waking up in the bathtub half-naked the next morning.  
  
“This is my brother, Axel. Axel, this is Riku; we have homeroom together. He just moved here from the beach. You sure picked the wrong season to move!" Her tinkling laughter reminds Axel of breaking china, the kind that he was going to face if the teen brat let anything slip about that party to Kairi.  
  
There was really no way to prove if anything had happened, but Axel sagely assumed the worst about himself, and then erased it from memory. _God_ , he’d been skipping math all week, no wonder he forgot! And _shit_ \- it dawned on him that he may have had it off with a _freshman._  
  
Times were not good for mindlessly boning your sister’s classmates. _Please don’t say anything, kid,_ Axel repeated like a mantra in his head, _Please, oh please, oh please—_  
  
Riku cocked his head a little, and wiped a handful of hair out of his face. He narrowed his eyes in an poor attempt of acting coy and said, “You know, didn’t I see you at— ”  
  
_Oh, you cheeky, little bastard._  
  
“Math class!” Axel interrupted, “Yeah, sure; I remember math class.” Axel draped one arm heavily around Kairi’s shoulders, knocking her off balance. “We’re in the same math class, Kai. How ‘bout that?”  
  
Riku’s smile faltered, wavering between being perplexed and affronted, but when Axel caught his gaze and sent him a sultry wink, the kid’s cheeks went brazen, and he didn't object. Axel wished someone were there to pat him on the back; the crisis was averted. This dude was cool and wouldn't rat him out. Break out the champagne; he might even not try to hit Axel up for drugs in front of his little sister, which happened too frequently to count.  
  
“Oh, wow!” Kairi beamed without catching on, “So, you’re taking a senior class then?” Bless her innocent little heart.  
  
“Uh, yeah. It’s a little intimidating.” Riku replied, still red and stuttering, but with that affectionate smile still on his face. _Holy shit,_ it was nice when someone knew how to take the low blow, Axel thought to himself, relieved. And even though he’ll never remember what happened in that bathroom at Marly’s, he hopes he at least gave Riku head. He deserved it for this little performance, just there and then. And what Kairi didn’t know, wouldn’t hurt her.  
  
“Well, I hate to break it to ya,” Axel interjected with a wide smile on his chapped lips, “but _I’m_ freezing my balls off here. And we need to go get Kairi a beautiful new dress.” His hands pulled tight against her shoulders and he jostled her playfully in front of Riku.  
  
“You’re gonna be sorry you missed this, kid. A true Cinderella story!” Axel said wiggling his numb fingers into the neckline of the wool. Kairi squeaked his name and slapped him with the sleeve of the coat, but Axel welcomed the opportunity to freely hitch his arm around her waist and turn her fully away from the coffee shop entrance.  
  
“I thought we were getting coffee—” Kairi began suspiciously. But Axel was all smiles and enthusiasm despite having taken on the pallor of an ice cube.  
  
“I told you, important things to do! Money to blow!” Axel spun Kairi around so that she slipped on the ice a little and staggered, but she giggled all the same.  
  
Axel fixed a wide-eyed devious look onto Riku as his sister slipped around in his grasp. “She’s gonna look stunning, incomprehensibly gorgeous, like a _freakin_ ’ Disney princess! What a _shame_ to miss it!” Riku didn’t have the nerve to _not_ blush and stutter, but he smiled endlessly at the two of them. Kairi eventually got a few well aimed slaps in as she blushed, then sniffed, and hooked her arm steadily around his own.  
  
“Axel! _Shut up._ I guess we should get going. I’ll see you in class, Riku!” Kairi, red-faced and huffing, forcibly dragged Axel away from Riku and further down the street. He didn’t struggle much, but managed to flips around and echo back _Yeah, see ya in class_ with a jaunty wave and a jubilant hack of laughter.  
  
“You are _so_ embarrassing!” Kairi groaned, and shoved her cackling brother against the front of a store window as Riku slipped out of sight behind them.  
  
“Aw, shuddup. You’re just mad ‘cause I didn’t compare you to Ariel without her fish tail. _Ouch!_ ”  
  
  


...x...

  
  
Axel is right; Kairi looks stunning in blue, but she finds a black cocktail dress with little pleather flowers sewn into the bodice and a short, poufy chiffon skirt that she falls in love with, and Axel doesn’t have the heart to argue against it once he sees the heels she’s picked out and her determined smile to match. Of course, Kairi shouldn’t be surprised that Axel is all too predictably at ease in evening gowns. He’s settled into a lemon yellow satin dress that looks too similar to Belle’s gown in _Beauty and the Beast_ and when she mentions it, he coaxes her into waltzing around the dressing room shouting “Be Our Guest,” with improvised dirty bits in French that send Kairi tripping over those grand stilettos in mirth.  
  
_Drop your trousers round your knees, Cheri, and we provide the rest!_  
  
Even if he ends up spending every last dollar he’d made off of that sack of jewelry that day, it’s worth it for this moment pure bliss between the two of them. Damn well worth it.  
  
  


**xXx**

**once he didn’t**

  
  
The casualty notification officer doesn’t stay very long.  
  
He’s sure it’s not because of the neon-green tweed skirt and black stockings Axel greeted him in though. Because _that’s_ what really matters when your older brother is killed in action and your mother won’t pick up her cell phone. The mind slips into a hyper-aware stasis, fixates on engendered social expectations, and Axel can’t wrap his head fully around his next thought because, well, his brother is dead. He had fully planned to to spend the day trying on different skirt suits and smoking spliff, but now he’s holding a certificate of death and a pair of dully clanking dog tags. That uniformed jerk-baller who just left didn’t care that he wasn’t wearing pants when he broke the news to him. The guy even tried to angle a look up while Axel was curled in on himself on the couch sobbing like a lunatic. He would swear it in court, if he were asked to —if it even fucking mattered—but he's _alone_ in this _stupid, fucking house_ high as hell and playing dress up, for God's sake. No one to even back him up.  
  
That’s why the stiff officer leaves so quickly; not because he’s uncomfortable, but because there’s no point in being there.  
  
_And why should he?_  
  
Kairi has been practically living out of her friends' closets instead of coming home to change clothes, Reno’s off being a big-assed thug somewhere Axel's not sure of, and his mom...There’s no one else. _People leave this big, fucking nightmare of a house_ , Axel guesses, _and then they never came back._ They’re meant to never come back, he begins to understand, and _he’s_ the only one who's been stupid enough to stay, stewing in the fantasy that he is _okay_ with _everything_. He’s been running back to it for his entire life, this awkward oasis in some great ocean of hot sand, but now it's has fallen apart like a bad joke. Axel's sitting on the stern of the sinking punchline, waiting to drown.  
  
Damn it. _He is not okay._ But he can’t exactly fault anyone, now that he understands his full capacity for naivety. There's a reason for all this. It's the same reason why Zack joined the military and got blasted through the skull on a recon mission, and why there's a warrant out on his other brother for grand larceny. It the same reason why every time their house catches the corner of Kairi's chlorine-infused, blue eyes, she smiles sadly and resists walking in the other direction. Axel could tell, because he had wondered what it would be like to go with her.  
  
It's probably the reason why he's so at peace with the feel of silk and satin against his skin, too.  
  
It makes sense now, but none of it's _okay._ He can't believe he was so stupid in the first place.  
  
_Damn it!_  
  


...x...

  
  
If he catches the 5:20 tram, he can make it to Demyx's before sundown, Axel figures as he glances at the nuclear green numbers of the microwave clock.  
  
There isn’t a lot he wants to take with him, once he stacks all the military paperwork on top of the stove and resists the urge to set it alite. Axel squeezes himself into an old pair of Kairi’s jeans, pulls on a pale, satin camisole, steals a hundred bucks and an empty cigarette pack stuffed with weed from Reno’s room, and then slips a familiar, belted black leather jacket around his shoulders. He thinks he’s finally ready to leave when he breaths the last burning smidgen of a joint into his lungs and then pitches the roach into the sink along with the dirty dishes. With gentle fingers, he loops Zack's dog tags around the neck of the faucet, turns the water on, and watches silently as the sink begins to overflow.  
  
He’s all lace, leather, and satin, _quick to burn but pretty to look at,_ when he walks out his front door for the last time, but no one is there to see him do it.  
  
Axel doesn’t blame them.


End file.
